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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25098610">Same Old Song</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsalliaArchive/pseuds/AsalliaArchive'>AsalliaArchive</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>BanG Dream! Girl's Band Party! (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Drabble, F/F, Fluff, Light Drinking, Pining, Post-Canon, and we were both girls, blush emoji, moca has implied Feelings™, what if we laid on your bed and listened to obscure indie rock</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 06:07:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,876</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25098610</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsalliaArchive/pseuds/AsalliaArchive</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A lazy afternoon spent laying in bed and listening to records presents Moca with the opportunity to try playing something new for Ran.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aoba Moca/Mitake Ran</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>43</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Same Old Song</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is my first time writing a drabble fic, yet alone anything that qualifies as fluff, yet after a week of playing the game I couldn't resist. I haven't unlocked much of Afterglow's story, but I've read enough that I wanted to try getting a feel for the characters - hopefully I'm not covering territory that hasn't been covered a million times already.</p><p>Regardless, thanks for reading :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"We were listening to this album last year."</p><p>It was an innocuous comment, or at least Moca hoped that it sounded that way when the words departed her lips for the muggy summer air filling her bedroom. Ran was splayed out on the bed with her in some nonsensically diagonal shape, head lost somewhere towards the foot of the bed and legs spilled across Moca's stomach. When she replied, the sound came out muffled by sheets that hadn’t been washed in ages.</p><p>"Did we?" She paused, flipped herself around like she was a patty on a grill. Moca laughed under her breath at the passing thought, not that it was a particularly funny one. "I hadn't thought about it.”</p><p>"Well, lucky for you Moca-chan does enough thinking for the both of us," Moca crooned. She craned her head up towards her chest to capture Ran's eye, then tapped the side of her head. Ran only gave a wry smile in return, and Moca took a moment to savor it before her head flopped back down onto the pillow.</p><p>"Hardly," Ran finally offered in response, now obscured from Moca’s vision once again. "It's a good album. You can tell how much passion and emotion went into it."</p><p>"You don't even know what the lyrics are," Moca teased. She'd long ago learned the fine line between egging Ran into a passionate defense of the music she enjoyed and flat-out insulting it. She liked to think she could walk that tightrope like a, uh...</p><p>Well, a tightrope walker.</p><p>"I don't need to!" Ran exclaimed, right on cue. "The singer's feelings are beyond words."</p><p>"Whatever you say.~"</p><p>Moca wasn’t even sure that they’d be able to understand the vocals even if they’d bothered paying attention in English class back in high school. So she dropped it, and they settled back into a comfortable silence, having already decided they'd beat the heat by lounging through it. Fire with fire, or something like that.</p><p>On the other half of the bed, Ran was nursing a cold beer, the last dredges of some godawful stuff that Tomoe had picked up en route to Moca's place the other day. Moca had given it to Ran like the kindhearted, wonderful, (etc., etc.) friend she was, no matter how much she could’ve used the buzz on a day like today.</p><p>Maybe that unfortunate sobriety was why Moca decided that she hadn’t gotten tired of the train of thought she’d been conducting along.</p><p>"Still, don't you think it's getting a bit old?"</p><p>Ran didn't respond for a few moments, at least until the current song finally faded out and left the record player devoid of anything to blare. It was a janky little portable model with built-in speakers that seemed to have no conception of a frequency below the E string of a guitar, yet alone the thump of a kick drum. It did a disservice to the music it was playing, and Moca knew it.</p><p>But it was a present from Ran, given to her during some Christmas lost to time. Moca had saved up enough cash to splurge on a nicer setup if she'd really wanted to, but she didn't. She liked this one.</p><p>The next song kicked in with a guitar churning out power chords, run through some kind of distortion petal that made it sound less like an instrument and more like a chainsaw - an effect that was only intensified by the way that the speaker crackled and distorted as it tried to recreate the sound. It wasn't until the rest of the instruments had entered the fray that Ran finally replied.</p><p>"What would you suggest instead, then?"</p><p>"<em>Idunno</em>," Moca mumbled in reply. "That's kinda the whole, y’know, thing." She waved a hand around aimlessly in the air as though she might succeed in tracing the shape of said <em>thing</em>, but gave up trying after only a second or two.</p><p>“Do I need to point out the obvious?"</p><p>"Obvious? Sounds like guesswork. I hate work," Moca whined.</p><p>Ran let out a hefty sigh. "That you usually never get tired of things.”</p><p>Moca hummed, put a finger to her chin.</p><p>“You <em>could </em>point that out,” she replied absently. “But then poor little Moca-chan would get insecure about it, wouldn’t she?”</p><p>Ran very audibly stifled a laugh. “Not likely, from the sound of it."</p><p>“Oh yeah?” Moca put on her best overly-theatrical pout and gave a childish huff for good measure. “Well, now that you’ve made me feel so <em>vulnerable </em>and <em>seen</em>, I’m leaving!”</p><p>“Right, of course.” Ran laughed, playing along with Moca’s little charade. “Where are you going to go?”</p><p>Moca sat up and cracked a smile, dropping the pretense just as quickly as she had picked it up.</p><p>“Over to the shelf,” she replied with a coy wink before swatting at Ran’s legs, which were still draped all over her. Ran was wearing worn jeans with holes scattered across the denim, half of which had come with age and half of which had been the result of the two of them and a pair of scissors. The holes gave Moca the perfect leverage to hook a finger into one and tug; only then did Ran relent and move off of Moca, though with her own huff to voice her displeasure at the disruption.</p><p>Finally, Moca rolled off the bed and sat up, her legs dangling off the side. She took a minute to stop her head from spinning - all her blood had seemingly rushed elsewhere, leaving her vaguely dizzy. That she was caked in sweat from the heat probably didn’t help; turning around, she grimaced when she saw a light damp spot on the bed in the shape of her body. Finally, she got down on her hands and knees and crawled to a shelf on the floor, stuffed full of records.</p><p>“What are we listening to?” Ran had turned towards the shelf with a curious eye, and Moca turned back to catch her gaze with a playfully coy look of her own.</p><p>“Not telling.~”</p><p>Turning away from Ran, Moca started flipping through her collection. It wasn’t really much to write home about, not that she had ever been inclined to brag about it. Its size was less an indication of any kind of record-hunting prowess and more a symptom of her eclectic habits; chief of which involved picking up 100-yen records with weird album art that she found at thrift stores. It was mostly done for shits and giggles, but enough of the records actually wound up being good enough for the price that she’d kept at it over the years even as the novelty faded.</p><p>The majority of her collection was naturally rock, but there were some more interesting records in the mix. Idly, she flipped by an album of old funk music, then some weird ambient compilation she sometimes put on when she needed help falling asleep. Still, she had something different in mind. She tutted absently to herself as her fingers danced across the spines of the covers, searching for one that she’d purposefully buried somewhere in the mess.</p><p>Finally, she found it. With a theatrical <em>“a-ha!” </em>to announce her find to Ran, she gave it a firm tug to dislodge it from the records on either side and pulled it out, brandishing it in the air.</p><p>“The genius Moca-chan strikes yet again.~”</p><p>“And what does the ‘<em>genius Moca-chan’</em> have for us?”</p><p>Still facing the shelf, Moca waved the record over her head so that Ran could grab hold of it from behind her. By the time Moca had turned around and sat back down on the bed, Ran had already pulled out the liner notes and started examining them.</p><p>“Look interesting?”</p><p>Ran stayed silent for a moment as she examined the somber-looking cover, a gold crane over a black background. “Where did you find this?”</p><p>“Trade secret,” Moca replied with a sly grin. Ran didn’t look amused.</p><p>“Come on, tell me.”</p><p>“Oh fine,” Moca conceded. “It was a recommendation from Lisa. She said you’d like it. Lots of really complicated playing and stuff like that, and a clean mix so you can actually make it all out.”</p><p>“I’m assuming you like it?”</p><p>“Wouldn’t know,” Moca replied with a shrug. “I was saving it for us to listen to it together.”</p><p>The corners of Ran’s lips curled upwards. “That’s awfully sentimental, Moca.”</p><p>“Poor little innocent Moca-chan being bullied yet again,” Moca lamented as she retreated back into her usual role. “Don’t you dare call me sentimental ever again or I’ll fondly remember it.”</p><p>Ran cracked up, and Moca smiled. Afternoons spent together like this were dearer to her than just about anything on the planet, but there were two things even dearer; Ran’s laugh, and the way Ran’s face lit up when she listened to a song she loved.</p><p>So Moca only took a brief pause to soak in the moment before she snatched the record from Ran’s hands, taking it over to the record player. She hadn’t even noticed that the current one had ended, but there the needle sat lazily at the end of side A. It almost looked like it was lounging there, and she felt bad about interrupting. Still, she picked it up and moved it back to its resting position before taking the record off the mat, giving it a showy spin and blowing on it to clear away the dust. She wasn’t sure if it helped, but it looked cool, which was more than enough for her.</p><p>Truth be told, she loved this record. She'd sometimes forget about it, sure, maybe even get sick of it. But like clockwork, every now and then she'd find it and fall in love with it all over again. The singers sounded almost desperate, yet hid behind the wail of their instruments. They tore through the songs at a breakneck pace yet played with a delicate touch. Everything about it had captivated her, somehow. That it had done the same for Ran, if in her own special <em>Ran </em>way, only amplified the feeling.</p><p>But another thought nagged at Moca, telling her that Ran deserved better than to be listening to the same old songs that they'd listened to last summer, yet alone the summers prior. She wanted them to make new memories of their shared present, not just the past. So she tucked it away in its sleeve and put it back on the shelf, then pulled the new record from its sleeve and onto the mat. As she put away the cover, her finger traced idly across the cover, until it came to rest on the gold lettering spelling out its title in yet more English.</p><p><em>Wait For Love</em>, Lisa had told her it was called. Moca steeled her breath, then moved back to the record player. She delicately positioned the needle above the vinyl, then dropped it down onto track one. The drummer began pounding away, a halestorm of toms and snares. The vocalist began singing, loud and triumphant. And then the guitars rang out in shared unison.</p><p>And when Moca saw Ran’s eyes light up, she knew she’d made the right decision. She wouldn’t trade moments like this for anything else in the world.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I came up with the idea for this while packing my record collection for a move and couldn't resist imagining some of the albums I sorted through as the ones Moca is playing. The first record is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ7QPuvv91JuoUsy6GzjlAawkoUOa1g3X">Hyperview</a> by Title Fight, and the second is, fittingly, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcZMZxR9uxC9LcDRp3OuGgduUkt4a8IF2">Wait For Love</a> by Pianos Become the Teeth. (Please watch the music videos for Wait For Love, they have cute lesbians.....)</p></blockquote></div></div>
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